


We Fit All Adding Up

by shinealightonme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Childhood Friends, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Foster Care, Gen, Kid Fic, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:49:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22515760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: It's fifth grade and Adam is new to this school, new to this house, and new to having friends.
Relationships: Adam Parrish & Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch & Adam Parrish
Comments: 76
Kudos: 490





	We Fit All Adding Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [warmestbloggerever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmestbloggerever/gifts).



> Written for warmestbloggerever, who won my Call Down The Hawk ficlet giveaway and requested Adam, Blue, and Ronan as kids, where Blue and Ronan are possessive of Adam because they both want him to be _their_ best friend. It, uh, it turns out I had a lot of feelings about "Adam as a kid."

"Do you have everything you need?"

Adam knows that he does, but he unzips his backpack and looks inside anyway, dutifully pushes the contents around and makes a note of every single one of them. It gives him an excuse to keep his eyes down and away.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Adam, sweetie," Debbie corrects him, very gently, "you know that you can call me Debbie, right?"

He does know that. He nods and concentrates on the zipper. The backpack is so new that the zipper glides shut easily, but he concentrates on it anyway.

"Do you want me to walk with you to your classroom?"

Adam shakes his head. This is his third school in two years. He knows how to handle being the new kid better than he knows how to handle adults who call him _Adam, sweetie_.

-

School has already started by the time Adam finds the fifth grade classroom. The office had spent a lot of time looking at papers and asking Debbie ma'am questions while Adam sat in an orange plastic chair too small for him and listened to the bell ring, ring, ring, _late, you're late, you're already late_.

Most of the kids turn to look at him when he enters. He stares over all of their heads. The flag in the corner of the room isn't unrolled all the way, half the stars hidden from view like those states were just washed away. The strap of his backpack is slippery in his hand.

"Hello! You must be Adam." The teacher is standing at the front of the classroom, near to the door. She walks over and leans forward to address him, hands on her knees. Adam leans away. "I'm Ms. Larkin, I'm glad to have you in my classroom."

"Thank you, ma'am."

Ms. Larkin says, "class, this is our new student, Adam," but she doesn't make him introduce himself. They made him do that in his last school. "We've got a spot right here for you."

She leads him to a table with three students and one empty desk. Two of the kids have stuff that hangs over the edge of their desk and onto the empty one, which they reluctantly pull back when Adam takes a seat. They don't _have_ to do that. He hadn't asked them to.

Ms. Larkin returns to the front of the classroom. Adam pulls his pencil box out of his backpack and sets it down on the table. Its stiff plastic clasp opens with a little _snap_. The girl next to him frowns at it. Her pencil box is a beat up old thing covered in stickers, some of them too faded for Adam to tell what they used to be. His is shiny and unscratched, like everything else in his backpack, nothing to be ashamed of. His face feels hot anyway.

-

Ms. Larkin has to say "Blue" twice before Adam realizes that she's talking to the girl next to him.

Ms. Larkin has to say "Blue" three times before Adam realizes that she's really talking to him. _Blue, please get Adam a copy of the worksheets -- Blue, help Adam find the chapter we're on -- Blue --_

He wishes she would just tell him to do things for himself.

"Blue, why don't you show Adam where the math workbooks are?"

Blue sighs when she stands up. She isn't much taller on her feet than sitting down. Adam wonders if she skipped a grade.

Other kids are getting up from their desks and heading in the same direction that Blue trudges for. There's a stack of brick red workbooks in the corner, under the flag. Each kid grabs a handful.

"Usually _one_ person gets them for the whole table," Blue says pointedly.

Adam is about to offer to bring them back by himself, so that Blue can go back to her seat, when someone shoves past him.

"We were here first," Blue snaps.

"Really? I didn't see you." The boy makes a big point of staring over Blue's head before craning his neck down to look at her. He doesn't pay any attention to Adam, even though he just shoved him.

"Give me the workbooks."

He flips through the stack, too quick to actually be looking at the names written on them. "Huh, there aren't any here for _Magenta_. Too bad."

Blue crosses her arms.

"Blue, Ronan, is there a problem?" Ms. Larkin asks in that voice adults use when they already know there's a problem.

"No." Ronan drops half the workbooks back on the shelf. Blue picks them up and stomps back to the table. Adam follows, feeling like an extra piece of a puzzle, unnecessary.

-

"Blue," Ms. Larkin says for the hundredth time that morning, after she's dismissed the rest of the class to _walk, don't run_ out to recess. "Why don't you show Adam around the yard today?"

Blue's "okay" is the least enthusiastic word Adam has ever heard in his life.

"Great!" Ms. Larkin says, even though she's looking right at them and has to see Blue's scowl, Adam's burning red face. He doesn't need a babysitter, especially not a babysitter who is _several inches shorter than him._

He sticks by Blue's side until they're down the hallway, out of sight of the teacher, and then when Blue heads out onto the yard, he walks off in a different direction. He'd rather spend recess alone than with someone who doesn't want to spend time with him, either.

-

He realizes his mistake when the bell rings at the end of recess and everyone else lines up with their classroom. He doesn't know where his class is supposed to go. He doesn't recognize any of the kids swarming around him.

Ronan saves him, in the end; he's tall enough that Adam can spot him from the other side of the yard. Adam runs over and manages to be the very last kid in line. Blue is the last except for him.

" _There_ you are." She sounds as annoyed about losing him as she'd been to get stuck with him in the first place. "Why did you run off?"

"You don't need to hang out with me. I can take care of myself."

"Yeah, except now the teacher's going to think I didn't listen to her."

"Oh." Adam hadn't thought about that. "If you get in trouble I'll tell her that it was my fault."

"I won't get in trouble." Blue rolls her eyes as Ms. Larkin arrives to collect them and the line starts back to the classroom. "She'll just try to talk to my mom about how I'm _alone_ all the time and I don't _play_ with the other kids and is anyone being _mean_ to me."

"...are they?"

"If anyone is mean to me I get mean right back," Blue says with satisfaction. "But teachers don't like it when you say things like that."

-

This class is doing an entirely different kind of science than what Adam had been doing a week ago; the history lesson that follows is new, too. Adam keeps his head down and doesn't ask any questions, just flips back and forth in his books, trying to turn the pages silently.

The last half-hour before lunch Ms. Larkin announces reading time. All the students relax a little, except for the boy that gets called on to read first. Adam thinks that this is another new subject, until Blue (who else) shows him the tiny class library and hands him a book. It's A Wrinkle in Time. He didn't recognize it mumbled as one never-ending sentence, but sure enough, there's Calvin getting shown around Meg's house. He wishes they were reading something he didn't know after all.

"That was great, Tyler, thank you," Ms. Larkin lies after a couple droned pages. "Ronan, why don't you take over?"

Ronan is an improvement. His voice rises and falls with the shape of the story instead of just stacking one word on top of another. Adam doesn't have to follow along on the page to understand what's being said, although he does, tense the whole time in case he gets called on to read next, or after that, or after that. He never does.

-

Adam doesn't slip away when they go to lunch. He sits next to Blue, even though there's barely anyone else at the table she picks. He thinks this is probably the weird kid table. That's familiar, anyway.

He can't get his thermos open. Blue looks at him funny for the first three or four tries and then takes it away from him. She clicks a little button that he hadn't noticed on the side. It twists off easily.

"It's new," Adam says, defensive.

"Were you homeschooled?" Blue asks.

"Why would you think that?"

"Your stuff's all new, you started a month late, and the teacher thinks you need help making friends."

"I wasn't homeschooled, I just moved." That doesn't sound too weird, if he leaves out the _to a new family_ part. "The teacher thinks we _both_ need help making friends, what's your excuse?"

"My mom is a psychic."

"So what? You're not."

"Maybe I am." Now Blue is the one who sounds defensive. "You don't know."

"No, because if you were psychic you would know I wasn't homeschooled."

Blue smiles, and then quickly pulls on a frown, like her face betrayed her. "It doesn't work like that," she tells Adam, loftily.

He shakes his head and eats his mac and cheese.

-

"What do psychic's daughters do during recess, anyway?" Food eaten, they have been released to wander the playgrounds. Blue shows no sign she plans to do anything besides that: wander.

"Sometimes I read," she says, like she's admitting something secret. "Have you seen the library?"

The library is small. It feels like the librarian is always right behind them. That's maybe why, when Blue tries to say something, he shushes her more forcefully than he meant to.

She looks outraged, but instead of storming off and leaving him alone, she shushes him back, actually rising up on tiptoes to get up in his face.

They shush each other back and forth with more and more exaggerated gestures. Blue makes such a hideous face at him that she looks like a gargoyle, and he laughs out loud. The librarian doesn't react to the noise. Blue is smug.

-

His good mood takes a hit when he steps out of the library and someone immediately runs into him.

Adam falls over, dropping his newly borrowed book and landing on his hands with a painful thud.

"Watch it." Adam has just a second to recognize Ronan from class. He barely stumbled when he ran into Adam, which isn't fair. He doesn't stop, which is even less fair. He chases after a soccer ball that's rolling away, kicks it toward a bunch of kids on the playground and runs off after it.

"Are you okay?" Blue helps him up.

He examines the library book to check it wasn't damaged. It's hard to tell if the dented corner is new; it was pretty beat up already.

"I'm fine," he says. "What's _his_ problem?"

"He's _tall_." Blue is apparently not done giving answers that have nothing to do with his questions.

"I'm tall."

"Hm, not _really_ tall. If you'd been here on picture day you would have been in the middle for class photo. Ronan's always at the back."

"And you're in the front."

"At least I'm not a _jerk_."

"No, you're just mean when someone else is mean to you first."

"Exactly," Blue says. "So don't be mean to me."

"All right," Adam says. "Deal."

Blue thinks for a moment before holding her hand out, pinkie extended. Adam hooks his pinkie with hers, feeling ridiculous.

"Now you're not allowed to get tall," Blue informs him.

-

"How was your first day of school?" Debbie asks, once he's buckled himself into the backseat.

"I didn't get in trouble."

Debbie's eyes go up to the rear view mirror. Adam doesn't squirm, even though he can tell he said the wrong thing.

"Okay, sweetie. Did you have fun?"

"Yeah." That's not enough of an answer. "I got a new book from the library."

"Did you make any friends?"

He knows what the answer to that is supposed to be. The surprise is that it isn't that hard to say.

"Yeah. I think so."

-

Ms. Larkin has a question for Adam the next day, so by the time he gets out to recess everyone else has beat him out to the playground. Blue isn't hard to find, though, sitting on the dirt under a sickly looking tree on the very edge of the yard. Yesterday's library book is open on her lap.

"Were the other kids being mean to you again?" Adam asks.

Blue rolls her eyes. "Ha, ha," but she puts her bookmark in and gets up to join him.

-

The weather changes Adam's second week of school, chilly and overcast. The metal bars of the jungle gym are awful in the cold. They leave a strange smell on his fingertips.

"Perfect," Blue declares. She perches at the top and sighs with contentment. "Most days there's too many kids up here."

"Weird that none of them want to sit on frozen wet metal." Adam shifts to the side, and then back, and then back again, trying to find someway of sitting on a metal bar that doesn't feel like he's sitting on a metal bar. He thinks the jungle gym would be unpleasant even on a nice day.

Blue stares pointedly at Adam's clenched hands. "Are you scared of heights?"

"No." She is not convinced. "I just have this weird thing where I like being comfortable."

"Well, get used to it, this is the only thing we're allowed to climb up. They don't let us climb the trees."

"So?"

"So I _know_ that all the second graders would tear the leaves off and the first graders would all fall and break their legs, but that doesn't mean that _I_ can't."

"I meant more...what's so great about climbing."

Blue sighs. She turns her back on the playground and hooks her legs around the bars on either side of her feet so she can _flip_ and hanging upside down.

"Look," she starts, hair sticking up and out in every way. One of her clips falls to its doom. "I know you're a homeschooled weirdo."

"Not homeschooled."

"So maybe you haven't realized this yet, but school _sucks_."

"I don't mind it."

"Ugh, you're such a dork. I'm not going to listen to you, you know. I don't listen to people who are upside down."

"I'm not upside down, you're upside down."

"Nope, I'm looking right at you and from here you're upside down." Blue crosses her arms with no concern for her balance.

The challenge is obvious; so is the response. Adam flips around like Blue did, or he tries to. Halfway down his brain asks _wait, what's happening_ and he wobbles. His arms flap out to catch his balance and he pulls himself back up quickly.

Blue laughs at him, swings her whole torso back up 180 degrees so she's sitting upright again next to Adam.

"I still don't see what's so great about this," Adam says.

"Well, you can see the teacher's parking lot from here." Blue rests her chin on his shoulder, looking in the direction she wants him to look. "Sometimes you can spy on them smoking. One time I saw Principal Richmond flip someone off."

Adam can see the cars, but there's no one around.

"Did not," he challenges her. He doesn't ask if they can climb back down now.

-

Blue's pencil box isn't disorganized, exactly, she just keeps so much stuff in it that there's no way it could ever look neat. It only takes her a second to find a booklet full of stickers. She flips through it and rips off a page that has a tree on it.

"For you." She holds it out to Adam, solemn like a grown up telling you they're worried about you. "To help you get over your fear of heights."

"I'm not afraid of heights. You're afraid of people."

"Oh, did I make a face like this? Because that's the face you made when you thought you were gonna fall."

Adam wants to argue, but she's making another gargoyle face and he wants to laugh even more than he wants to argue. He slides the sheet with the sticker on it into his folder and class begins.

-

Adam loiters at the end of the hall to the girl's bathroom, because loitering right in front of the girl's bathroom would have been awkward. He feels awkward anyway, enough that when a soccer ball rolls up to him he stops it with his foot and then shuffles it around, this way, that way, just to have something to do while he waits for Blue.

"Hey, kick it here."

Adam puts a foot on top of the ball so it can't roll away. "What'll you give me for it?"

Ronan stares at him like the words don't make sense. "I'll kick it back to you. Have you never played soccer?"

Adam has; not enough to be any good, but enough to know that there's supposed to be a goal. Except, oh, some kids are playing football on the soccer field. So Ronan is bored. Well, Adam is bored too. He kicks the ball to Ronan --

\-- and then Blue is there all of a sudden, grabbing his arm and half running out toward the playground. He stumbles after her rather than let her yank him along. When he thinks to look back, Ronan has kicked the ball off in the other direction and gone running after it. So he did just want to steal it.

-

Adam's never been dropped off at school this early before. He looks around for Blue, and then looks around again, but there's hardly any other kids here. It's not like he could have missed her.

Alone, he sits down and opens his book.

"Hey," someone says before he's gotten more than a page. "Do you want to play four square?"

When looks up there's a kid smiling at him. Adam doesn't recognize him; he's too young to be in Adam's grade.

"Don't you need four people for that?" Adam asks.

"We have three, we need one more!"

"No thanks." Adam turns back to his book.

"Please?" The kid basically whines it. "You can serve first."

"Don't bother with _him._ " Adam recognizes Ronan's voice, before he's even looked up. "He has one whole friend, he's too good for anyone else."

It's supposed to be mean, and yet, it's true. Adam has a friend. Adam doesn't need anything else. Adam isn't needy.

"All the other kids here are babies," the kid complains, like he isn't the youngest out of the three of them.

"Go play tether ball, there's no line."

The kid lights up and runs off, forgetting Adam and possibly even Ronan.

Adam waits for Ronan to follow him, or to go somewhere else, but he doesn't. "I thought you weren't going to bother me."

"You should be nicer," Ronan tells him. "Matthew's just a kid."

"You're telling _me_ to be nicer?" Adam asks. " _You_?"

"Yeah, so you should do it."

"I'm not mean if I don't want to play with someone."

Ronan rolls his eyes. "Whatever."

-

There's a really specific annoyance in the word "m _om_ " that Adam immediately recognizes. He walks down the grocery store aisle and turns the corner before he's even thought about it.

"'No vegetables' is not an option," the woman by Blue is saying. "If you don't pick, I will."

Adam calls out softly, "Blue?"

She makes eye contact with him, and for a second it's strange, seeing her outside of school, like she's out of his reach somehow. He wonders if he shouldn't have come over, if he looks strange to her too.

But then she's smiling and throwing her arms around him. School-Blue has never hugged him. He takes too long to hug her back; she's already pulled away.

"Adam! Mom, Mom, Adam's here!"

"Yes, I can see that," Blue mother says. "Hello, Adam."

Adam goes tongue-tied. He nods.

"We're going to make a pie tomorrow," Blue says, and ignores her mothers _we might make a pie if someone picks some real food, too._ "You should come over! Mom, can Adam come over?"

"I'd love to have your friend over, but I draw the line at abducting children from the grocery store."

Bill catches up to them just then. Adam hopes he didn't hear the joke about kidnapping. "That's where you wandered off to, Adam."

"Sorry, sir."

Blue's mom does that grown up thing where she somehow looks taller and more official when she's talking to another grown up. "I hope we didn't worry you, we were just borrowing him for a minute. I'm Maura, this is my daughter, Blue. You must be Adam's father?" Adam thinks maybe there was a pause there, like she was going to say something besides _father_. Like she's thinking that Bill looks older than she does.

"Foster parent," Bill says, like it isn't a big deal. Blue's eyes shoot over to Adam, curious and surprised. He wishes she'd just kept on studying Bill with the same judgement she'd had the first time Ms. Larkin had worn pointy toed boots in class. "But we're all hoping the placement works out."

Adam needs them to not be talking about this anymore. "Bill, can I please go to Blue's house tomorrow?" he asks. "I'll do all my chores first."

"Sure, if it's all right with Maura."

"Please may I come over tomorrow, ma'am?" Adam asks. He's still not looking at Blue.

Blue's mom tilts her head a little, like Blue does when she thinks that something he's said is funny. "Yes, we'd love to have you over. I think you and Blue are going to be a marvelous influence on each other."

-

"I can't remember the last time Blue had a friend over," Blue's mom says to the woman in the kitchen with her. Adam has seen five women since he arrived at the house. He hopes that no one expects him to learn all their names. "She's always been such a _solitary_ child, no matter what I did." Ms. Sargent's voice is different now then it had been when she'd promised Debbie she'd have him back home by six. Like the difference between talking to a friend and talking to a grown up.

"Ha! The selective memory on you, Maura," the other women says. "You hated play dates just as much as she did. Don't blame your infant daughter for your own failings."

"I'm not an _infant_." Blue talks to everyone the same way. Adam loves that about her.

"Good, then you can take the trash out." The woman kicks the trash can lightly with one foot.

Blue crosses her arms, stubborn.

Adam pulls the liner out of the trash can. It's heavy. "I can get it."

"Well, thank you, Adam," Blue's mom says. "Aren't you a little gentleman."

"What, don't I get any thanks?" Blue demands.

"Has Blue done anything to be thanked for?" the other woman asks Blue's mom.

"I'm standing right here!"

"Why don't you show Adam where to the trash goes," Ms. Sargent says, just as he starts to realize that he doesn't know where to take it.

Blue goes _ugh_ and stomps off. At school, on the playground, Adam would think that was funny. Now he checks on the grown ups. They look like they're as amused by that as he would have been, so he hurries after her.

-

There's construction paper leaves stuck on a construction paper tree stuck on the wall of Blue's bedroom.

"Mom says foster care is temporary," she says. "She says some kids go back home."

"Some kids." Adam hugs his knees tight to his chest. "Not me."

He can just see Blue's feet out of the corner of his eye, resting on the edge of her bed.

" _Good_." Her voice is low and strained. "I don't want you to go anywhere."

Adam shuts his eyes and presses his forehead against his knees.

The bed rocks down and up as Blue stands up off it, fast. "You know what we should do," she says, too loud, too fast, "we should go up to the attic, it's so creepy, you need to see it."

-

It is creepy in the attic. Adam loves it. Adam loves Blue's whole house, how strange and busy and loud it is. He loves it and it makes him nervous.

He asks Bill and Debbie if Blue can come over next weekend; that makes him nervous too. Their house isn't really fun like Blue's is. The walls are the same not-quite-yellow in every room, and the only thing hanging on them is photos of Bill and Debbie and their grown up kids. He doesn't exactly _like_ the weird art in Blue's house, how it's all crammed in close or how none of it goes together, but it's definitely interesting.

Blue doesn't seem to mind the boredom, though. "You have so much _space_." She's lying in the middle of the floor in the living room, her arms and legs stretched out in every direction.

"It's kind of weird," Adam admits. "It feels empty sometimes."

"It needs more stuff in it," Blue agrees, so they spend the afternoon cutting shapes out of construction paper. Adam doesn't let her stick anything to the walls, but he keeps them after she leaves. He likes having something colorful to look at.

-

According to Blue, Adam lives in an old person neighborhood, and she refuses to go trick or treating there. She doesn't want to go in her neighborhood, either, but declares that they should go to the rich part of town. Adam doesn't mind either way. He does like it that Blue's mom trusts them enough to go trick or treating on their own.

Well, not actually on their own, but she puts Blue's teenage cousin in charge of going with them, and she ignores them the entire night and walks two blocks behind them, which is just as good as being on their own.

Adam wrinkles his nose as they approach the house on the corner of the next street. "What is _that_?"

"Are you scared?" Blue asks, looking gleeful.

"No. I just don't see the point." The house is clearly trying to scare them; the decorations are a lot more sinister than the cartoon witches and smiling jack-o-lanterns at the other houses. The yard is so overgrown it would probably be creepy all on its own, in the daylight, but now it's dark and there's a mannequin like a dead body hanging from a tree branch at the front of the drive, with shadows down the path like there's more things hidden along the way.

"It's a haunted house," Blue explains, like he couldn't figure that out.

"Why's everything outside? Houses are haunted on the inside."

"It's okay if you're scared. You don't have to go, but then you won't get any candy."

Yeah, Blue would love it if he chickened out. "I bet _you're_ scared," he challenges her.

"Bet I'm not," so there's nothing else to do but creep slowly through the yard toward the door. Adam looks straight ahead and doesn't investigate any of the things he sees out of the corner of his eyes.

There's a low moan from the direction of the house. Blue stops dead in her tracks.

Adam stops to give Blue a second, but the second ends and she still doesn't move.

He's about to say _if you want to just leave we can just leave_ , because seriously, what candy bar is worth this, and then something _touches his arm._

Adam yelps and stumbles forward, crashing into Blue. He whirls around, heart pounding in his throat, and sees --

Ronan from school, pushing past them where they've stopped in the middle of the walkway.

"'Scuse me," he says, sarcastic and too late.

Blue charges down the path after him, her fear forgotten. "Hey, jerk, you can't sneak up on people like that."

"Yeah, I can, I'm pretty good at it."

"You're pretty good at being a jerk. And you can't take that many!" she snaps, because Ronan has just grabbed a huge fistful of candy from the bowl on the porch.

"Says who?"

"Let it go, Blue." Adam just wants to get out of here.

Ronan grabs another fun size Kit Kat out of the bowl and tosses it at Adam. He steps out of the way before it hits him. It rolls off somewhere into the creepy yard. "Yeah, Indigo, listen to your boyfriend."

"Ha, ha," Blue says. "That's _so_ original."

Ronan walks back up the path. He brushes against Adam again, even though there's enough room he could have just walked around.

They grab their own candy from the bowl. The yard is less creepy on the way out, or maybe just because Blue is mad and Adam is worried about Blue being mad. They get back to the street in no time. Blue heads for the next house.

Ronan heads the other way. There's a tiny little pirate sitting curled up on the curb, arms around his knees and wallowing in misery. Ronan squats down next to him and dumps his entire fistful of candy into the bucket by the kid's feet. "See, nothing to be scared of."

Adam recognizes Ronan's brother when he yells "you made it!" and throws his arms around him.

Blue calls back, "Adam, come _on_ ," and he hurries after her.

-

The students trickle into class one morning and Blue's seat is empty. That happens sometimes, depending on who's dropping her off. But it stays empty as the morning drags on, and the teacher doesn't call her name during roll.

Adam focuses as hard as he can on every assignment they get that day, but he can still feel panic building up underneath it, nearly breaking out every time he finishes a problem set or turns in a worksheet. She's _gone_ , and that could mean anything: her mom pulled her out of school, her family moved, she has a new family, she's in the hospital, she's _gone_ and she isn't coming back.

-

They talk on the phone sometimes. Blue nearly always calls him first, Debbie picking up the phone and telling him _it's your girlfriend_ and his face going red.

He calls her that afternoon the second he gets home.

"You weren't in class today."

"'m sick."

"Oh." Adam sags against the wall. "Good."

"There's nothing _good_ about it." She sneezes loudly and wetly into the phone.

"You're going to be back once you get better?" He hates that it comes out like a question.

"Do you know some way I could get out of school? And you haven't told me? Some friend you are."

"You could ask your mom to homeschool you. Since you think homeschooled kids are so great."

"You can't hear it, but i just stuck my tongue out at you."

"No, I heard it," Adam assures her. "It was gross."

Blue sneezes again. Right into his ear, basically. Ew.

-

Blue is still out the next day. Adam handles that pretty well until PE starts and the coach makes them partner up.

All around him kids grab their buddies and pull them close. No one grabs for him, which is fine -- he isn't grabbing for any of them, either -- except the coach isn't going to let him do this by himself. So he has to stand there, obvious and unwanted, and wait to see who else is left over.

The last kid alone is -- Ronan. Weird. He thought Ronan had a lot of friends; he's always in whatever part of the playground is the loudest, the places that Adam avoids, where kids shove each other and shout about who can score the most goals. Surely one of them would have wanted to spend the next half-hour being too loud and too physical with him.

Except apparently not, so it's Adam who has to hold Ronan's ankles for sit ups and count off Ronan's push ups. He figures Ronan will goof off when it's his turn to do the same for Adam, count the numbers wrong to make him lose track or just not do it at all, but he doesn't. He does everything just like he's supposed to.

The coach hands out volleyballs to each pair of students. He demonstrates the way they're supposed to bump the ball with their forearms and set it up with their fingertips.

Ronan tosses the ball up and spikes it.

Adam takes a half a step back before he realizes that there's no way he can return service. That he isn't supposed to. He watches it fly across the blacktop for a second before he jerks his head around and stares at Ronan: _are you kidding me._

Ronan just stares back.

At least now he knows why Ronan couldn't find a partner.

"Adam, buddy, get the ball and keep it moving, chop chop," the coach says, mostly distracted by one girl squealing and flinching away every time her partner sends her the ball.

Adam goes after the ball. It's rolled all the way to the auditorium, and he half-jogs on the way back, annoyed at how far he has to go and how long it takes. He thinks the whole way about hitting the ball too hard on his serve, making Ronan run after it so he can see how he likes it. It's a nice thought. Instead he sends the ball straight to Ronan, so that he'll look like a jerk if he makes Adam go running after it again.

Ronan must not mind looking like a jerk, since he does it again on the next pass, and the one after that, and the one after that, until the coach finally notices, tells him to quit it and makes him run laps when he does it _again_.

-

"Why don't you just do what they tell you to?"

Adam could let this drop. He planned on letting it drop, acting like the whole thing had never happened the moment his PE uniform was back in his bag. But he gets stuck next to Ronan in line, and he's annoyed all over again, and confused in a way that makes the annoyance worse: doesn't Ronan understand that he made class harder for _both_ of them?

"What fun is that?"

"If you do what you're supposed to then they to leave you alone and you can do whatever you really want."

Ronan says, "I always do whatever I want."

-

Ronan does always do whatever he wants; that's why he's benched at recess, sitting not far from where Adam is reading his book. He keeps looking over, like maybe Adam is turning the pages too loudly. Adam makes a face at him. 

Ronan picks up a pebble by his shoe and flicks it with his middle finger. It shoots down the bench and hits Adam's thigh. It doesn't hurt -- he can barely feel it -- but that's not the point.

Adam flicks it back to Ronan, or tries to. It goes crooked and falls off the edge of the bench before it's halfway there. Ronan snorts.

Adam glares at him and picks up another pebble. This one hits its target. He turns back to his back, task accomplished.

There's another tiny _thwack_ against his leg. He knows without looking that it's going to be another pebble, that Ronan is smirking at him.

Adam sighs. This isn't going to end. He either has to swallow this irritation in silence, or fire back at Ronan and get sucked into his stupid game, or go read somewhere else, which would just be running away. There's no good move -- no, wait.

He gets up and walks ten feet down the bench to sit down right next to Ronan, too close for him to flick anything over. There's just about an inch between them. Ronan is completely caught by surprise. _Good_. Adam opens his book back up and starts reading like he isn't aware of anything else in the world.

-

Blue's out again the next day too, but Adam doesn't really get a chance to miss her. When they head for the playground, Ronan is just _there_ , walking out to recess next to him. He doesn't say anything, so Adam doesn't have to say anything either.

A group of the boys in their grade walk by. One of them reaches out, fast, and smacks the back of Ronan's head.

Ronan whirls around and shoves him, knocking him into another kid. The boy just laughs and keep walking. Neither of them notice or care that the yard monitor is looking right at them.

Adam hates attention.

He grabs Ronan's arm and tugs him over toward the side of the playground with the jungle gym. It's harder to be seen if you're behind it.

He almost asks _why did you do that,_ but he figures Ronan would say that the other boy had started it. "You could've waited until no one was looking."

"I'm not going to wait if someone hits me first," Ronan says. Adam is reminded oddly of Blue, _if someone is mean to me I'm mean back_. "Who sits around _plotting revenge_ , anyway? Is that what you got kicked out of your last school for?"

"No," Adam says, "because if I plotted it out I wouldn't get caught."

"So what did you get kicked out for?"

"I didn't get kicked out, I'm not you. I moved."

"Uh-huh," Ronan says, not buying it. "In the middle of the year?"

He feels a weird flush, like he's being accused of something, even though he told the truth. "I move a lot."

"Yeah?" Ronan asks, like he's trying to figure something out. Maybe whether he believes Adam or not. "How long before you move again?"

He could not answer. He could walk away. But that would be letting Ronan win again. And -- is he really worried about sounding bad in front of _Ronan_?

He says, "I don't know."

"So it'd be really stupid to wait to take revenge," and Adam can't argue with that.

-

Ronan sits next to him at lunch. Adam doesn't mind. It turns out Ronan on his own isn't loud like Ronan as part of a group is.

He doesn't really know what he's supposed to _do_ with Ronan, though. They end up wandering the edges of the yard, out of anyone's way. The few trees by the fence have shed most of their leaves. Adam kicks at a pile of them on the ground. Ronan reaches up with one hand and taps a branch as he passes under it.

"Blue says we can't climb them," Adam observes.

Ronan glares at him and then grabs the branch with both hands to pull himself up.

"What are you doing?"

"The impossible." Ronan swings up onto the branch.

"You're going to get in trouble," and Adam's barely finished saying it before he hears "get down from there!"

The yard monitor walks over fast. Adam can't help but think she should have something better to do than this. Blue was right; it isn't like Ronan's going to fall off, and even if he did, it'd just be about five feet. He'd hurt himself more playing soccer with kids who like to hit him.

"You know that's not allowed, Ronan."

"He was just trying to get this." Adam picks up a Frisbee off the ground, knocks off the leaf that's stuck to it to make it look like it hasn't been lying on the ground. "It was stuck up there."

The yard monitor starts to open her mouth, visibly struggling to think of Adam's name. None of the yard monitors have ever spoken to him before.

She gives up and turns back to Ronan. "Next time, ask one of us to get it. And be careful," which is a bit late. Ronan has already dropped out of the tree and onto the blacktop. He watches her leave with an expression on his face like he doesn't know what to say, either.

-

"Is that your mom?" Ronan asks at pick up. "She's old."

"And you're rude," Adam says, without any heat. He settles his backpack on his shoulders and starts for Debbie's minivan.

Ronan pushes him as he takes a step. It's barely anything, not like when he shoved the kid earlier. Adam's foot lands a little further out than he meant it to, but that's all that happens.

He needs to get to the car, but he spares a second to turn back around and look at Ronan.

"What?" Ronan asks when he doesn't say anything.

"Nothing. Just plotting."

Ronan rolls his eyes. "I'm not scared of you."

-

"Was that a boy from your class?"

"Oh." He didn't know Debbie had seen them talking. He hopes she missed the part where Ronan pushed him. "Yeah. His name's Ronan."

"He seems nice."

Adam says "yeah" because you're supposed to agree with grownups. Ronan isn't really _nice,_ but if he said _no_ then Debbie would think that Ronan is a _bad kid_ , and that isn't right either.

-

Blue stays home the rest of the week. Adam doesn't actually plot any revenge against Ronan. Sometimes they play tether ball, because Blue never wants to play; she says it's biased against short people. Adam figures out pretty quick that saying Blue can't or won't do something is a good way of getting Ronan to do it. He can't figure out why.

-

Adam doesn't say _hi_ to Blue when she sits next to him in class on Monday. He can't get any words out, and then class starts and he doesn't have a chance to anyway. On top of all the normal lessons Blue has to take a make up test.

Blue talks enough for both of them once the recess bell rings. Before they even make it down the hallway Adam has heard all about how gross cough syrup is and how boring naps are and how annoying it is to have grown ups check on you every hour like you're some kind of baby. He wouldn't think she'd have much to say about five days spent in bed, but he would've been wrong.

There's only one pause in the conversation, when they reach the playground. Blue falls into a seat on the first bench they pass, and when she looks up from criss-crossing her legs she makes a face -- not a gargoyle, something meaner.

"What do _you_ want?" and even though Adam can tell the question isn't for him, the rudeness of it makes him anxious.

He looks over his shoulder and sees -- Ronan, standing a few feet away. The anxiety grows.

"Nothing," Ronan says, perfectly matching her meanness. "I just thought we got rid of you." 

"Yeah, 'cause I'd really do something that made you happy." Blue rolls her eyes. "Run along now, bye-bye."

Ronan turns around. Adam thinks he's supposed to say something. He doesn't have enough time to think what, though. Ronan doesn't wait. He doesn't even look at him.

Blue says, "oh. Oh! I had an idea," excited and impossible to ignore, so Adam focuses back on her.

-

"Well?" Blue asks as soon as she sees Adam. "Did you ask?"

She's bouncing on the balls of her feet. Adam can't look at her when he answers.

"I did. They said no."

" _What?_ " Adam had been disappointed when Bill and Debbie had said he couldn't sleep over at Blue's house, especially after she'd just been gone for a week, but Blue's disappointment feels worse than his own. "My mom can pick you up, they don't have to drive you anywhere."

"It's not that. They don't think that it's appropriate. Because you're a girl."

"That's sexist!"

Adam shrugs. "They say that boys and girls can only have sleepovers if they're married."

"But we'd be _so old_ by then!"

"I can stay over until bedtime," Adam offers as a solution. "But then I have to come back."

"That's not the same at _all_." Blue wraps her arms around her knees with a huff. "This isn't fair. Why are they so mean?"

"They're not mean."

"Why are you defending them?" She glares at him. "Did you even argue with them? You didn't, did you?"

He didn't. "Just forget it, okay?"

"Do you even care?"

"I said forget it," Adam snaps.

Blue says "fine," and it's not fine at all.

-

Adam is still on edge during pick up. He's been distracted all day, repeating the words of his and Blue's argument to make up for all the words they aren't saying to each other. He's standing next to her but deliberately facing away, half-watching Ronan wrestle with his brother a few feet away and half-watching as Debbie's minivan slowly inches forward in line. He's normally a little sad to leave school, but today he just wants to get back to the house, have a snack, work on his homework --

"Oh, no." He takes his backpack off and drops it on the ground.

"What's wrong?" Blue asks. Her concern sounds genuine.

Adam rifles through his books, even though he knows what he's going to find. He's right. "I don't have my math book. I left it in my desk."

"So?" He's being too obvious, apparently, because Ronan has wandered over to see what's going on. "Just run and get it."

Ms. Larkin's classroom is in the building closest to the gate. It's also off-limits after the end of the school day. "I'll get in trouble."

"Not if you're sneaky."

Adam shakes his head, picturing getting _caught_ , picturing the school telling Bill and Debbie that he broke the rules, and then -- he doesn't know what then.

Ronan rolls his eyes, disgusted or just bored by the lack of an argument, and leaves.

Blue squats down next to Adam and grabs a folder from where he'd dropped it. "You can turn the homework in a day late, the teacher won't care. It's not like you ever get in trouble."

Adam focuses on zipping up his backpack. His throat is all clogged up. He can't actually explain to Blue why it would be so horrible if the grown ups decide that he's a _bad kid_.

Blue sits down on the grass and tugs his arm. Tugs on it again until he rocks back off his feet to sit down next to her. She wraps one arm around him, like she wants to help even though she doesn't understand. It makes him feel worse. He's ashamed that just a few minutes ago he wanted to get away from her.

A book falls onto the ground in front of Adam's feet. He glances at it out of reflex, following the noise, and then he scrambles for it.

"You're welcome," Ronan scoffs. He doesn't wait for Adam to say _thank you_ , just goes to join his brother again.

-

"I didn't actually say," Blue starts, the next day in class.

Adam tilts his head at her: _what?_

"You should come over on Saturday. Until bedtime."

"Okay." Adam nods. "Good."

She slides a sticker out of her folder and across the desk to him, slowly, like maybe she thinks he doesn't want it. It's a little cartoon crab, claws up to pinch someone. The corners of his mouth twitch, remembering the day Blue had spent their entire lunch break trying to explain horoscopes to him.

"I'm not a crab," he says, but he puts his hand on the sticker and pulls it closer, anyway.

"Oh, _please_ ," Blue says, too relieved to sound properly annoying, "you're such a crab, that's you _exactly_."

He shakes his head and opens his pencil box, laying the sticker down carefully on the bottom, its backing still intact.

Blue gets a funny expression on her face. He wonders if maybe he's supposed to say that he's sorry for yesterday. He kind of thought that this was the apology, for both of them, but maybe not.

Blue asks, "why do you always do that?"

"Do what?"

"You never stick them on anything."

"I don't want to lose them."

"You can't lose them if they're stuck to something."

"I could lose whatever I stuck it on."

"Then I'd just give you more stickers."

Adam shrugs. He can tell that Blue doesn't really understand. "It's a Cancer thing, you wouldn't get it."

"You can't just say stuff is a Cancer thing," Blue complains, "that's not how astrology works."

-

Adam sits down at his desk one morning only for Ms. Larkin to tell the class that they're changing seats.

Blue whispers "no!" but they don't have time to do anything before they have to clean out their desks. He hopes maybe they'll end up near each other again, at the same table or back to back across an aisle, but he doesn't even get to imagine that for long. Ms. Larkin reads their names off in alphabetical order -- _A_ , and Adam is assigned to one table; _B_ , and Blue gets sent off to a table on the other side of the room.

He keeps his head down and stows his stuff away in his new desk. It doesn't take long enough. Everything was in a neat order to start with. He fiddles with it, arranging and rearranging things.

A messy stack of papers and books and pencil shavings drops down at the desk next to him. He looks up to see his new tablemate -- _R,_ Ronan.

-

"We're being punished for not being bad students," Blue complains at recess. "This is so stupid. What'd we waste all that time before good for? We should have been loud and not gotten any work done."

"Then she'd split us up for being disruptive," Adam points out.

"At least then she wouldn't think you were a _good influence_." Blue says this like it is the worst thing someone could be. "You wouldn't have to sit by Ronan."

Adam doesn't really want to hear Blue insult Ronan, even if he is in trouble a lot. "Since she made you sit by Ariel does that mean that you're a good influence, too?"

"Ewwww, no. She probably just thinks that I'm such a weirdo nobody will talk to me." Blue holds her head high, dignity intact.

-

He can't actually keep Blue from talking about his new seat assignment forever. She's brings it up over and over, actually, like it's really important. She tells him that Ronan will pick on him, or distract him, or get him in trouble, or cheat off of him.

Adam tells her that she's wrong about the cheating and ignores the rest of it. He won't agree with her when he thinks she's wrong, but telling her she's wrong about this feels disloyal.

And he definitely doesn't want to tell her about the notes.

He didn't start it on purpose. Ronan was just doodling one day, drawing glasses and a mustache on the weird cartoon pioneer man in their history book, and it made him laugh, so quiet only Ronan could hear him. Ronan glared at him, like he thought Adam was laughing at _him_ , and -- it was too funny to keep to himself, but Ms. Larkin was still lecturing, so he just wrote down in the margins of his paper, like he was taking notes, _he looks like Principal Richmond_. And then Ronan had grinned and leaned over, written underneath that, NOT BALD ENOUGH.

It wasn't much, but it must have been enough, because they keep doing it.

Adam finishes a math problem set before anyone else: _Ms. Larkin put the wrong answer on the board, how long until you think she notices?_

Ronan gets bored and needs a break from copying definitions out of a dictionary: LOOK OUT THE WINDOW THAT BIRD HAS A PENCIL.

Someone comes by from the office to talk to Ms. Larkin, and the whole class can talk if they keep their voices low, but Adam and Ronan keep writing anyway:

WHY'D YOU LEAVE EARLY YESTERDAY  
_appointment_  
DOCTOR?  
_no,_ because he doesn't want to lie, not in writing, not to Ronan, but he can't write out the words social worker; _sometimes I have to go talk to someone_  
OH I'VE HAD THOSE. SUCKS, RIGHT?

He was ready for Ronan to make fun of him or ask what he meant; he wasn't ready for that. His hand is shaking and he can barely spell out the words _yeah it sucks_.

Adam always erases his notes before anyone else can see them. Ronan leaves his, if it's not on something he needs to turn in. They still exist, little snatches of conversation, where Adam could flip through the papers in his desk and find them again.

-

"Everyone pull out your journals," Ms. Larkin says, and Adam does it even though journal time is boring. And Ms. Larkin doesn't _grade_ their journals, just checks that they wrote something, so he doesn't even have an A to look forward to. "Since we're heading into the holiday season, I want all of you to write one page about your favorite holiday tradition."

Around the classroom kids lower their heads and start writing. Ronan gets two lines down before Ms. Larkin finishes telling them how they can write about any tradition, for any holiday. The room gets very quiet and still the way it does during a test.

Adam sits frozen in place.

"Ten minutes left," Ms. Larkin tells them, and goes back to grading at her desk. Adam has wasted _half his time_ sitting here and he hasn't written a single word. He scribbles the date at the top of the page and then -- freezes again.

 _Tradition_. Tradition means you do it every year. There isn't anything Adam has done every year, because Christmas last year had barely existed. There were six kids in that house and all of them knew they were getting shuffled off somewhere else in the new year. Their foster family had taken them all to church in the morning, the same church that donated a present to each of them. Adam's had been a toy from some movie he'd never seen. He doesn't want to write about that.

This isn't going to be graded. He just needs to pick _something_ to write about. It shouldn't be hard. Bill and Debbie filled the house with Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving, and Debbie's been baking every kind of dessert Adam's ever heard of from old recipes that she likes to explain to him while she makes them. Their daughter is coming back to town soon and Bill's already planned out every moment of her visit like he's trying to fit in as much holiday as he can. Adam just needs to write about -- that, all, any of it.

The problem is that he _does_ have a favorite tradition. They used to go to see the lights in town square on Christmas Eve. There was a booth near the towering pine tree that sold hot beverages, and if Adam went up by himself the little old ladies running it would give him a cup of cocoa for free. There were always a few carolers out, but his parents didn't like the singing, so they'd get cider or eggnog or one of those drinks the little old ladies wouldn't give to Adam and then they'd go sit on the far side of the square while Adam played in the snow until his gloves were soaked and he couldn't feel his fingers.

But a tradition is something you do every year, and he isn't going to do that this year.

Ronan kicks his shin.

Adam jerks his leg back. He glares at Ronan, but Ronan isn't looking at him, he's looking down at the blank sheet in front of him.

His face turns red. He wants to slam the notebook shut. He wants to yell at Ronan for noticing that he's stuck, for not just ignoring it.

Except Ronan doesn't look like he's laughing at Adam. He doesn't even look confused. He just looks thoughtful, like he's trying to figure something out, and then he flips to the next page in his notebook -- his journal entry already reaches down to the end of the page, with the last sentence curling up the side of the page to fit in -- and he writes CHOP DOWN TREE.

Adam's face goes even redder, but he writes that down: _my favorite holiday tradition is chopping down a Christmas tree_. That's a tradition that he's done no years, ever, and somehow that makes it easier to write about.

It doesn't get him very far, though, and he's only about a third of the way down the page when he finds himself looking back over at Ronan's notebook.

Ronan writes HANG UP ORNAMENTS + COOKIES.

Adam writes in faint letters near the bottom of his page: _you hang cookies on a tree?_

Ronan tries to kick him again, but he moves his foot out of the way too fast.

NO. MAKE COOKIES SHAPED LIKE TREES.

That's enough for Adam to go off of, making up details until he reaches the bottom of the page. He erases his note to Ronan and covers the nearly invisible imprint there with more fake holiday cheer.

-

Blue sits down at their usual lunch table. Adam stays on his feet and ignores her "what's up?" He watches the line of students heading for the lunch tables until he spots Ronan and makes eye contact. He jerks his head, an _over here_ kind of gesture, and then he sits down fast. He only knows that Ronan does head their way because Blue says " _him_?" in a tone of utter disgust.

"Go with me on this one."

Blue shuts her mouth, not refusing the request but not happy about it either.

Who knows, maybe Ronan will just see what Adam wants and then leave again. That would be easiest.

Ronan sits on the bench next to Adam, sideways, like he can't be bothered to swing both legs under the table. "'Sup, Yellow."

Blue takes a very large bite of her sandwich, glaring at Adam: _this is your fault._

Adam opens his lunch box and pulls out a frosted Christmas-tree-shaped cookie. Debbie had been thrilled when he'd asked if they could make cookies last night, to the point that he felt bad about it. He didn't actually care about the cookies, and the house was full of holiday sweets already. He just -- he _wasn't_ going to let Ronan cheat off of him, but he didn't know how else to pay him back. Maybe he could have done nothing; he hadn't asked for help, and if Ronan has so many happy memories that he can afford to give one away then it clearly doesn't matter to him. But it mattered to Adam, and he didn't want to owe anyone anything.

"Here."

Blue looks even more disgusted, absolutely betrayed behind her peanut butter and jelly, so Adam gives her the other cookie. That only makes her suspicious. She eats the cookie but squints at him the entire time. He has to try very hard not to laugh.

"Can you even eat those things?" Ronan asks her. "I thought witches burst into flames if they touch something religious."

"Christmas was a pagan holiday first," Blue tells him snottily.

"Was _not_."

Adam eats his dessert-less lunch and listens to them argue.

-

He hangs out with Ronan in the mornings before Blue gets dropped off, and in weird moments when Blue isn't around, like when they change for PE, or the day that the boys and girls get separated for a humiliating hour of health class that leaves the entire fifth grade either avoiding eye contact or whispering and giggling whenever the grownups aren't looking.

He goes over to Blue's house after school some days, and some days she comes over to Bill and Debbie's house, and it's the two of them the way that it had been the two of them before.

But more and more it's the three of them: at lunch, at recess, in the line for pick up.

Ronan and Blue ignore each other sometimes, especially at pick up when Ronan's brother is around too. When they aren't ignoring each other they're usually arguing, usually about something stupid. Adam goes back and forth on being annoyed with them or laughing at them.

Until it stops being funny.

"Come on, give me a turn already." Blue nudges Ronan, except she's standing next to Adam and has to reach over him to do it. He thinks that it bugs him more than Ronan. "Share your toys."

"This is an _educational tool_ ," Ronan says. For a second, with that voice and the binoculars he's holding, he sounds very mature. Just for a second though. "And it's mine so I don't have to share it."

"You gave Adam a turn."

"Yeah. I did." Ronan smirks at Blue. Adam's stomach clenches up.

"Ugh. You were a toy hog in kindergarten and you're a toy hog now. Shouldn't you have grown up a little since then?"

"At least I got taller since then." Ronan holds the binoculars up over his head, out of Blue's reach.

"Real smart." Blue crosses her arms, not backing down. "You know Adam can still reach them, right?"

The question is directed at Ronan, but it's really for Adam to answer: to either grab the binoculars or say _no, I'm not going to do that_.

"Nice try, Orange." Ronan drapes one arm, the one that isn't up in the air, over Adam's shoulders. "Adam's on my side."

"He is not! Adam, tell him he's being a jerk."

Adam doesn't tell Ronan anything. He doesn't tell Blue anything. He shrugs Ronan's arm off and pushes past Blue, and then he walks away without saying a word. When Blue calls out "Adam?" after him, he walks faster.

-

The bell rings the end of lunch. Adam emerges from hiding and goes to line up with the rest of his class.

Blue and Ronan are there already, next to each other, which surprises him. Blue spots him first and elbows Ronan. His mouth moves, saying something to her that Adam can't hear. She jerks her head toward the end of the line.

Adam turns away, fast enough he only catches a glimpse of their expression. Anger? Annoyance? Or just confusion, _why is Adam acting so weird?_

Blue's still in exile on the other side of the classroom, but there's no avoiding Ronan, not when they sit so close that they bump elbows sometimes if Adam isn't careful. Ms. Larkin hands back their history tests from last week. Ronan doesn't even pretend to look at his score, just flips it over to write on the back.

YOU OKAY?

Adam glares. He doesn't want to write notes on his history test and he doesn't want to have gotten a 19 out of 20 because he missed the last question and he doesn't want to talk about lunch.

He reaches over and writes _fine_ on Ronan's paper, in heavy letters that'll be hard to erase. Ronan doesn't even try.

-

Adam plays basketball with Ronan the next morning, because that's really the only time they can. Basketball is one of the activities that Blue despises _because it was obviously just invented so tall people could show off_.

Besides, you can't talk much while you're playing.

Blue appears on the sidelines at some point, and Adam figures that's the end of the game.

Ronan passes her the ball. "Hey, Purple."

She dribbles it a few times and chucks it back to him. "Horse?"

He tosses the ball up and catches it, thinking it over. Adam figures he's going to say no. You don't get to block anyone or steal the ball in Horse.

"Okay," he says. "Adam starts."

Blue rolls her eyes. "Duh."

Ronan passes the ball to Adam. He just barely catches it before it hits him.

He missed something, somewhere. He doesn't think they'll tell him what it was, though, so he just lines up a shot and takes it. Blue and Ronan both laugh when he misses.

-

Winter break starts. Ronan's family goes out of town. Blue has a bunch of relatives visit, because somehow she has even more relatives than just the ones that live in her house. It's too hectic for Adam to go over to her house often, but to his surprise, he's mostly too busy to go over.

There's just a lot _more_ Christmas than he expected: Debbie takes him shopping, asking his opinion about gifts for children in her extended family that he's never met. Bill's friend has a holiday party. They ask if he wants to go ice skating, and he spends a very wobbly hour regretting saying _yes_. He's actually glad when their daughter Annie arrives, because it means someone else gets to be the center of attention for a while.

He'd been worried about having another grown up in the house, one he doesn't know, but Annie is nice to him in a way like she doesn't have any idea what to do with him. They have that in common. Mostly they just smile at each other and don't talk, until the night that he catches her smoking out back.

He stares at her and she stares at him like _he's_ the adult and _she's_ the kid that's going to get in trouble.

She says, "don't tell Mom and Dad."

Adam hesitates.

She's an adult, and she doesn't live here; how bad could this really get for her?

But -- she asked.

He nods.

"Thanks, little dude. I don't really want a sad lecture about how my body is a temple right now. Just -- " her breath makes a cloud in the air, water vapor this time instead of smoke. "All this family togetherness and moral support and questions about my life, it makes me need to take the edge off. Mom and Dad are kind of a lot. Do you date?" 

"I'm ten," he reminds her.

"Okay, give it a few years and you'll know what I mean." She goes wide-eyed and panicky looking. "Not that you should smoke. Shit. Don't do drugs. Drugs are bad."

Adam lets her worry for a second -- fair's fair -- and then he says "nice save, that was really persuasive."

She burst out laughing. "Nah, not so much. Hey, you like Zelda?" and she lets him play some of her video games. He's pretty bad at them. She has to all the jumping parts for him.

-

Christmas Day brings more presents than he's ever seen in one place, and most of them are for _him_ , enough that he gets dizzy: a Transformer that makes Annie laugh, "kids still like those?"; the latest book in a series he and Blue read, so new the school library doesn't have it yet; a lot of comfortably boring clothing.

The last present is a giant Lego set of a whole city block with cars and trees and people all around it. Adam is grinning, excited and already guessing from the picture how all the pieces go together, before he really thinks about how big it is. It'll only be bigger once he takes all the pieces out of the box and starts connecting them. There's no way he can take this anywhere with him. When he leaves this house, this is staying behind. All of this is staying behind.

He keeps smiling while he says thank you. He can finish the book before the end of break; he'll give it to Blue when they go back to school. He doesn't know how long it'll take to build the Lego set -- he's never had one this big, or one with all the pieces in it -- but he'll just have to work fast. He wants to see what it looks like all put together.

-

He does manage to invite Blue and Ronan over for one afternoon before break ends.

It's kind of weird to see Ronan outside of school, especially since he's better behaved now than when teachers are watching him: walking instead of running, using his inside voice, calling Blue by her actual name instead of whatever Crayola marker he can think of. It's funny enough that Adam doesn't realize the danger until he hears Ronan in the next room tell Debbie "thanks, Mrs. Parrish."

"You're welcome, honey, but -- "

Adam hops off the couch and asks Blue "do you want to play outside?" before he has to listen to the rest of the conversation.

There's not really enough snow on the ground to be fun, but Blue gives it a go anyway, stretching out on her back to make a snow angel. Adam wants to make one just to show off that it's bigger than hers, but he can't really get into it. He sits on his butt in the snow, getting cold.

Ronan comes outside a few minutes later and sits on the ground close to Adam. Too close, actually, elbow digging into his side and knees knocking together. Adam isn't going to let him win, so he doesn't scoot over. Besides, Ronan is warm.

"You don't have parents?" Ronan asks.

"No."

Ronan chews this over for a while, and then he says "shit" like he's trying the word out.

Adam whirls around, but Ronan is just grinning, proud of himself. "You can't say that!"

"Who's going to stop me?" Ronan asks, and throws a handful of snow in his face.

Adam gasps and brushes his face clear. Ronan looks even more smug than before. That won't do. He shoves Ronan, knocks him over into the snow and pins his shoulders to the ground.

Ronan laughs.

"I win," Adam says.

"Are you sure?" Ronan asks, and before Adam can insist _obviously_ , Blue hollers an impossibly loud war cry, "Aie-ie-ie-ie!" and a snowball hits him in the back of the head.

By the time they stumble back into the house, soaking wet and freezing, Ronan is not the only one who has said a bad word, and Adam is too exhausted to care about that, or about anything.

-

It rains and then snows and then rains again. They get stuck in the classroom for a lot of lunches and recesses.

Ronan gets antsy after the second day of no outdoors time, and it only gets worse as the rain continues. He usually settles down when Adam asks him to, or once when Adam touches his elbow and asks if he's okay. Adam doesn't want Ronan to get tired of him, though, so he only does it when Ronan is about to get in real trouble with Ms. Larkin.

Blue's in a bad mood, too. She gets in a fight with Ariel every day for a week, until Ms. Larkin moves her to a new table -- sadly not Adam's -- and calls both their parents.

"Your mom wasn't mad?" Adam asks during lunch. He keeps his voice low, because Ms. Larkin's desk is only a few feet away, although with every kid in the classroom talking at once she probably wouldn't hear him anyway.

Blue shrugs and steals one of Ronan's Doritos. He takes a swipe at her, even though he doesn't like the nacho cheese ones. "She just asked what did Ms. Larkin think would happen when she locked thirty children in a room all day."

Adam thinks that Ms. Sargent has a point. He's finding it hard to sit still, too, and he's not loud or vibrant like Blue and Ronan are.

"There's a basketball league starting up," he mentions.

"Ew." Blue wrinkles her nose. "Team sports."

"I hate to agree with Turquoise, but yeah," Ronan says. "Ew."

"Turquoise is a kind of blue, stupid."

"It's green, stupid."

"It's indoors," Adam interrupts the argument, because it's only going to get stupider the longer it goes.

"Turquoise is indoors?" Blue asks. Ronan also looks confused.

"Basketball," Adam says. "Running around? Not in the rain?"

"I thought we already decided we _weren't_ doing that," Blue says.

Adam shrugs. "Bill and Debbie thought I might want to sign up."

"But you don't," Ronan says. "Right?"

Adam shrugs again.

"Adaaaaaaaam," Blue drags his name out. When that doesn't get a response she pokes him.

He scoots his chair back, the one inch he can manage in the crowded room. "No, I don't, okay? Knock it off."

"So then don't sign up."

"I think they want me to." Adam hesitates. "I think they think I need more friends."

"You _don't,_ " Blue and Ronan say in perfect unison. They shoot each other the exact same look of betrayal.

-

"It's my brother's birthday next week."

The bell is going ring soon. It's spitting rain, light enough Ronan hadn't minded walking around in it but heavy enough Adam got sick of it. They ended up on benches in the covered walkway to the office, which technically isn't part of the playground, but the bell is going to ring soon, anyway.

"Good for him?" Adam doesn't get why he's supposed to have an opinion on this. He hadn't even had an opinion on Ronan's birthday, and he had gotten a cupcake out of that one; Ronan's mom had brought them in for the whole class. Blue had still been mad at Ronan for scaring her on Halloween. She'd whispered to Adam _how spoiled do you have to be to get a birthday party at school_. He feels bad remembering that now.

"He's having some friends over for a sleepover," Ronan says. "My parents said I could have a friend over too."

"What, they're going to have a bunch of kids to deal with and they thought the solution was more kids?"

"If Declan gets to have friends over, why can't I?"

"I mean, it's his birthday." Adam wonders if Blue didn't have a point about the _spoiled_ thing after all.

Ronan makes a face at him, almost but not quite a gargoyle. "Do you want to come over or not?"

It catches him off guard. His mouth opens without him really deciding he's going to say anything, and then he has to figure out what that thing is.

"Can I?"

"That's what I'm asking you," Ronan says.

"Yeah." Adam still feels off-center. The closest he's come to a sleepover was short term care, six kids in one house with three bedrooms. This is a _real_ sleepover, with a friend, and also with a bunch of sixth graders, but that's fine. He and Ronan are pretty good at being alone in a group of kids. "I'll check, but -- yeah."

"Great, that's really clear." Ronan acts annoyed, sticking his hand out past the overhang and flicking his fingers in the rain, but he's smiling.

-

"My mom's having a séance" is the kind of thing that only Blue could ever say. This isn't even the first time she's said it.

"What's so cool about that?" Ronan asks. "I can talk to dead people right now. Hey ghosts, you suck."

"But can they talk _back_ to you?" Blue demands.

"Why would I want to listen to a bunch of dead loser ghosts?"

"It's really cool," Blue says, talking only to Adam now. "Mom says you can come and watch if you're quiet, which, obviously. You should come over."

"So he can help you fake it?" Ronan asks.

Adam answers Blue, because Ronan's just obviously trying to cause trouble. "Yeah, that sounds cool. When?"

"Saturday."

"Oh, I can't," Adam says. "I'm sleeping over at Ronan's." He's a little disappointed that he'll miss the séance, and he figures Blue will be too, but maybe her mom will have another one soon.

Blue doesn't look a little disappointed. Blue looks really really disappointed. Blue looks _hurt._ "Oh, so are you two married now?"

Ronan chokes on his apple juice. It's one of those things that should be funny, that has been funny before, when Blue has deliberately timed something surprising to make him do that. It isn't funny now, not when Adam suddenly remembers _why_ he's never been to a sleepover.

"Look, it's not a big deal." Bad choice of words. It is a big deal and Blue knows it. "It's just because it's his brother's birthday," and now Ronan looks offended too, as much as you can look offended while coughing.

"It was a big enough a deal that you were willing to ask for it."

"That's not the same thing." It wasn't; he hadn't had to argue. He'd barely had to ask. Debbie had said yes before she'd even asked if he had Ronan's parents' phone number, and Bill had gone to dig a sleeping bag out of the closet like Adam was going to need it right then.

"I know what it is," but she can't understand it, not really, or she wouldn't say it so upset like that. Unless Adam is the one who doesn't understand.

Ronan has recovered enough to snap at her, "Chill out. You can have your boyfriend back on Monday."

Blue is just -- silent. She doesn't snap back at Ronan or make an ugly face or even yell or throw anything, which Adam half-expects from the tension that's radiating off her.

It freaks him out.

"Blue -- "

She grabs up her lunch box and stands up, so fast it startles him, and she walks over to sit at a table with a bunch of girls in their class.

Ronan leans away from the table like he's surprised, or like thinks she might come back and he'd have to defend himself.

She doesn't, though, and after a minute he leans in again, grabs a fruit leather out of his lunch and tears the wrapping open. "What's _her_ problem." He doesn't ask like he cares about the answer, like it's a real question. He says it like he's rubbing it in Adam's face that she left.

Adam stares at Ronan until he notices, until he frowns in confusion, until his smirk starts to slip, until he asks "what," and that is a real question.

Adam goes back to eating. He doesn't leave like Blue did, but he's very good at just -- not being there anymore, when he doesn't want to be somewhere.

-

There's a lot of things to look at in the office. A long row of stuffed animals. Potted plants by the window. Posters on the walls, _this is how I feel today_ with a bunch of adjectives and cartoon faces.

Adam doesn't need any of them, but he appreciates having something to look at besides his social worker. Not that he doesn't like her. She's not bad, although she watches him very closely in a way that makes it hard to talk, and she always sounds like she's reading from a script, even when she asks him a question about something he just said.

"It sounds like your schoolwork is going really well." That she _is_ reciting; she says that every time, even when Adam had been new at a school and struggling. She would point out how hard he was trying, which he always thought was missing the point. "How are your friends doing? Ronan and Blue?"

She might be reciting their names from somewhere she has them written down, but maybe not. Adam thinks that _Ronan_ and _Blue_ are pretty hard names to forget.

"Good. Blue wants to do the school play this spring. Ronan bet her he'd get a bigger part than she did." Adam doesn't mention that both of them are mad at him.

"And how are things at home? With Bill and Debbie."

Adam says "good" and waits for her to push him on that. She always does, because he never knows what more he's supposed to say. Although she had smiled in a not-practiced-looking way when he told her about Annie calling them _kind of a lot_.

She doesn't push him today, though. She doesn't say anything. She leans forward in her chair like she's about to get up, except she doesn't do that either.

"Adam, before you met the Hawthornes, you and I talked about making it a long term placement if it was a good fit. Do you remember that?"

He does remember. She'd asked him if he knew what long term meant. He'd said _it means my parents don't want me back_.

Now he just nods and stares at his feet.

"They've both told me that they want to keep you, if you want to stay."

He snaps his head back up. She's still just sitting, leaning forward in her chair. Waiting.

"For -- for how long?"

"Well, if everything works out, until you're eighteen and done with high school," she says. "I'm not asking you to tell me how you feel about that today, but I'd like you to think about it, all right? It sounds like this has been working out. And I'd love for you to have some stability."

His head is pounding. "I wouldn't have to move again?"

"No," and her voice is so gentle that Adam blinks, a few times, fast. "I know short term was hard on you." He shrugs. She must think he's such a baby. "That wasn't a criticism. It's hard for a lot of kids."

"I was fine."

"I know. But I think you'd do better if you had somewhere you knew you got to stay. If you had people you knew weren't going anywhere."

"I..." Adam trails off with no idea what he was going to say. "I'll think about it."

-

They're in the car, driving back to the house, and Adam is thinking so hard that it hurts.

Debbie asks him, "how was your appointment, sweetie?"

"It was good." He says that even when it's bad. He says a lot of things he doesn't mean. He doesn't say a lot of things that he does mean. "I don't really like being called sweetie."

"Oh! Of course, hon- of course, Adam. Thank you for telling me."

"Thanks." He stares out the window.

Out of the corner of his eye he can see Bill turn, like he's looking at Debbie, or like he's looking at Adam in the rear view mirror. All he says is, "it's a little early, but what do you say we pick up some Chinese food for dinner on the way home? As a treat."

"Can we have pizza instead?" Adam asks.

"Sure, pizza'd be a great treat."

Adam says "thanks" again and lets his brain chase itself around in circles.

-

He goes to his room so he can put his shoes away before dinner. The walls are the same boring not-yellow color they've always been. He wonders what color he'd even want them to be, besides boring.

The pizza is already on the table, but he takes a second to dig his pencil case out of his backpack. He peels the backing off of one of Blue's stickers and presses it onto his bedroom door.

-

He finds Ronan first, which is normal. Blue gets dropped off soon after he does, which isn't normal; he wonders which aunt made that happen. She spots them from across the playground, the same time they spot her, but she heads off toward the library.

Ronan leans against the chain link fence a little too aggressively, throwing himself at it. "What, aren't you going after her?" he asks.

"No," Adam says. "I can't fix anything with her if you're just going to ruin it again a minute later."

"Right, because I ruin everything."

"I don't think you ruin _everything._ I think you're going to pick a fight with her because that's what you always do. I'm tired of it."

"I don't have to be nice to her just because you like her."

"Yeah, actually, you do," Adam says. "Because I get upset when my friends are upset."

"You get upset when _Blue_ is upset," Ronan corrects him. "We all know she's the only one you really want to be friends with."

"No, she's not."

"She _is_. You picked her on your first day and you barely ever talked to anyone else after that. You only talked to _me_ because she wasn't around, and you ditched me as soon as she came back."

Adam grips one arm, right above his elbow, his other arm pressing up against his chest. He doesn't want to argue with that. He has to argue with that.

He can't argue with that.

"I didn't think you wanted be my friend," he says. "You were always playing with the other boys back then."

"Those boys are jerks." Ronan looks him over and shrugs. "I guess you're a jerk too."

The grip on his arm starts to hurt. He should let go.

"I didn't think _anyone_ would want to be my friend," Adam says. "Having one friend was already a lot for me, okay? I wasn't looking for more friends because I didn't think I'd get any, not because I didn't want them."

He forces his hand open. His fingers are so tense that moving them hurts worse than the pain in his arm.

"Well that's stupid," Ronan says, but the stress is fading from his voice.

"What's stupid is thinking I don't want to be your friend _now_. That was months ago."

Ronan shrugs, a tight up and down motion that looks uncomfortable against the chain link fence. "Maybe. But she'll always be your friend first."

Adam sighs. "She came first, I can't do anything about that. But that isn't -- there isn't a _first_ , not one that matters."

Ronan is quiet for so long that Adam wonders if he's going to let it go, wonders where Blue is, wonders if the bell is about to ring.

"If she made me mad," Ronan says. "Would you be upset with her?"

"That happens five times a day and it's usually about some stupid thing from kindergarten that neither of you can get over."

Ronan tilts his chin up. It's a defensive posture, even though Adam is standing several feet away, even though Adam is shorter than him, and he doesn't like that Ronan needs to do that because of him.

"Not like that. Really mad."

Adam breathes out. "Yeah. I would be upset about that."

Ronan nods, taking this in. "Right now I'm more mad at you than her," but it's the least mad that Ronan has ever sounded. Adam doesn't shrink away from him.

"Yeah?" he asks. "What about if I came over for your weird unbirthday sleepover, would you still be mad at me then?"

Ronan scowls at him. "You were going to do that anyway!"

"Yeah, but would you?"

He sighs out the word "no" and this time he does sound mad, but it's ridiculous. It's all too ridiculous. Adam feels light, like something that was pulling him down has just let go.

-

Blue's hard to talk to for the rest of the day, so Adam doesn't try. He waits until after school and asks Debbie if he can go over to her house, even though he hasn't done his chores or his homework.

It's busy, so they end up in the creepy old attic. That isn't odd; it's always busy, and they like the attic. Blue has been quiet since Adam arrived, which is odd.

He apologizes, of course, sincerely and immediately, or at least as soon as there's no cousins around.

Blue shrugs. "I get it, you didn't make the rules." She's digging halfheartedly through one of the dusty attic boxes. He's about to ask her to stop when she unearths a pack of tarot cards. "You want your fortune told?"

Adam doesn't care. "Okay."

Blue holds the cards out, spreading them like a fan. He pulls one at random and shows it to her, tilting it so that he can see it too. It has a bunch of stars on it.

"What does that mean?"

She looks at it and then says "I have no idea," and they both crack up laughing so hard they lie down on the creaky attic floorboards.

Adam says "I'm _sorry_ " again, now that Blue is actually here, but she just smiles in a sad kind of way and says "I get it." She doesn't disappear this time, so he lets it go when she says "I _get_ it, okay?"

They sprawl out on their stomachs, propping themselves up on their elbows and fiddling with the cards. They try to play War for a while, but it doesn't work out; half the time they can't decide which is the high card. They end up spreading the deck out across the attic floor, looking at all the pictures.

Some of the cards have naked people on them. Adam tries not to stare or blush or do anything weird.

Blue says, right in his ear, "you're probably _curious_ about the _human body,_ " just exactly like the PE coach in health class. Adam groans "stop" but she talks over him, "it's perfectly NATURAL," and he has to chant over and over, "stop, shut up, stop," before she's finally laughing too hard to keep going.

The naked cards get shoved away. There's still plenty to look at. One card is just a guy stabbed full of swords. Adam picks it up and says, without thinking, "we should show this one to Ronan."

The change is immediate. He and Blue are lying shoulder to shoulder; he feels her tense up.

"Fine," she snaps. "Take it."

Adam says, "look, it's just a sleepover -- "

"It's _not_ ," she insists. "It's not _one_ sleepover, it's going to be more of them, and then you'll do -- soccer together or something -- "

"I thought we vetoed team sports," Adam tries to argue.

" -- with a bunch of other boys, and you'll join Boy Scouts and go to summer camp together and then it'll be middle school and you'll sit together at the boys table at lunch and just -- it's just not _fair_."

"You think I want to be his friend because he's a boy?" except oh, duh, why hadn't Adam seen this before. "You think I'm going to stop being your friend because you're a girl?"

Blue shuts her eyes tight and turns her face to the ground and oh, Adam knows that posture, when you can't hide how someone hurt you but you're hoping they don't notice anyway.

"People already make stupid jokes about how I'm your girlfriend," she says. "It's just going to get worse in middle school. Why would you want to stay my friend if you don't have to be? If you could have a best friend who could always be there and who no one made fun of you for and who wasn't some girl who's a total weirdo."

Helpless, but trying anyway, Adam says "because I like you."

Blue jerks her head to the side, face out of view. Adam knows that move, too.

He shifts his weight to one elbow and lifts the other arm off the ground, rests a hand on Blue's back.

"I'm weird, too," he reminds her. "I don't want to go to camp or sit at the boys table, those guys are jerks. I want you to be my best friend. I just want Ronan to be my best friend, too."

"You can't have _two_ best friends." Blue is tense under his hand, like he hasn't helped at all. "That's not what _best_ means."

"We're weird, right? Why do we have to follow the rules?"

Her back rises and falls a few times, in quick jerky motions.

Finally she confesses, "I don't want you to replace me."

"I won't," Adam promises. "I don't want you to go anywhere. But I don't want him to go anywhere, either. If I really get to keep people, then I want to keep you two."

Blue peers over at him over her shoulder, face mostly but not completely obscured. "Even though he ate a box of crayons in Mrs. Thompson's class?"

Kindergarten strikes again. Adam barely even minds, this time. "You've told me about that, yeah."

She sniffs and hoists herself up on her elbows. "I'm going to make him tell me if you do anything embarrassing at the sleepover," she declares.

"How would I embarrass myself at a sleepover?"

"You could wet the bed or talk in your sleep," so great, now Adam gets to worry about _that_. "If I don't get to be there, I want to at least make fun of you after."

"Okay. And I have to tell you if Ronan does anything embarrassing, is that how that works?"

"I was going to make you do that anyway."

-

Ronan's mom drives to his house to pick him up for the sleepover. He practically runs out the door as soon as he sees the car; because he's excited, and because he's trying really hard to focus on how excited he is. It sucks that he has to also feel sad and guilty about Blue. He'd like to be happy and nothing else.

Except another emotion starts to sneak in as they drive: suspicion, because he's familiar with this route. It flips over to shock when they turn onto Blue's street.

He twists away from the window to Ronan, a question without words.

"Oh yeah," Ronan says, like it just occurred to him to mention. "I invited Goldenrod too."

Adam grabs Ronan's hand. He can't find any words, and for one split second it feels like a totally natural thing to do for one. A second later it feels stupid. He's probably looks like a baby now -- 

Ronan squeezes his hand tight.

He lets go a second later, looking straight ahead. Adam smiles helplessly at him anyway, until the car door opens and then he smiles at Blue.

"Adam! Scoot over, I don't wanna sit by Ronan."

"No one asked you to, Amber."

"That one really is a name," Adam points out. He unbuckles his seat belt and slides into the middle, even though Blue definitely has the shortest legs.

"Duh," Ronan says. "What kind of loser wouldn't have a real name."

"At least 'blue' means something," Blue grumbles as she hops into the car. Her door slams shut at the same time that the driver's door opens. "What does _Ronan_ even mean, anyway?"

"Oh," Mrs. Lynch says as she takes her seat. "'Ronan' means 'little seal'."

Blue's head whips around to goggle at Ronan, mouth hanging open and eyes wide with sheer delight.

Ronan crosses his arms and mutters something, too quiet to hear with his mom three feet away.

Adam laughs. He's too happy not to. His hand is next to Ronan's on the car seat, not quite touching, and Blue's leaning against his other side, saying "thank you _so_ much for having me over, Ms. Lynch" in a total suck up voice that he's going to make fun of her for later. They're both right there, and he shifts his hand up against Ronan's, knocks his knee against Blue's, reaching out for both of them, just because he can.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic, you can [reblog it on tumblr](https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/190631115605/we-fit-all-adding-up-shinealightonme-raven)!


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